The Out-of-Control Author by Jael McHenry from Writer Unboxed. Peek: "...tips for a) claiming the control that you can, and b) totally being okay with being out-of-control when it’s called for."

Writers Have Time to Get Better by Brian Yansky from Brian's Blog: Diary of a Writer. Peek: "I feel lucky that I'm a writer. I get to keep trying to write better until I can't write anymore. That's a gift. Think of being a professional athlete and the short run they have at doing what they love."

Twitter Messaging: Dos & Don'ts by Angela Ackerman from QueryTracker Blog. Peek: "Direct messaging is for reaching out to people in a personal way, not to talk at them, especially to spam them about products or services."

All I Have to Give from Marion Dane Bauer. Peek: "...while I can’t go out and feed the unnumbered starving, while I can’t stop the wars, protect the women, gather up the orphaned, bury the forgotten dead, renew the health of the climate, while I can’t stop this spinning globe from hurtling toward destruction, I can do one small thing."

Thank you to Greg Leitich Smith for reading the "Feral Pride" manuscript aloud to me last weekend. At this stage, my eye will "see" what I meant to type, so having a fresh reader and the natural pacing of a voice is absolutely essential.

Just for fun, here's a sampling of last-minute tweaks/queries:

"Goth elf," not "Golf elf"

Can state troopers turn off their dash cams?

Are there really no snakes in Ireland?"

Vancouver's way too far from Vermont, how about...?

What time do 24-hour McDonald's stop serving breakfast?

Trichinosis

More physical description of the boys

Corporate Security: hard copy vs. electronic

Speaking of the Feral trilogy, Feral Curse comes out on Tuesday (and Feral Nights comes out in paperback) from Candlewick Press.

As I look forward to the release of my thirteenth book and seventh prose novel, I'd like to thank Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature for highlighting my debut novel, Rain Is Not My Indian Name (HarperCollins, 2001) among her recommended YA reads featuring Native American characters and themes. Peek from Debbie: "There are over 500 federally recognized tribal nations! Within them,
some of us are living on the reservation, and some of us are in urban
areas and cities. We dance, and we drum, and some of us sing our
traditional songs, but some of us like rock and roll, too."

Books stay in print because of their champions. If you treasure a book or voice, make noise--for years beyond the release date--to support it.

"For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron."

In the writing community, we talk a lot about getting out of the way of your characters and letting them take over. Like most writers, I'm sympathetic to JKR second-guessing herself. I also wonder what our expressing such misgivings might mean to young readers.